According to the Financial Times, while things are not contentious yet, there are a couple of obstacles for newspapers and magazines to the Apple model for the iPad.
The first is Apple’s practice of keeping hold of all consumer data. Publishers collect a lot of data on subscribers including names, addresses, locations and credit card numbers and Apple doesn’t share this. “Is it a deal breaker? It’s pretty damn close,” said one senior media executive of a major US metropolitan daily newspaper.
Publishers don’t like the 30% Apple/70% publisher revenue split. While this may make book publishers happy, newspapers and magazines feel that Apples 30% retention changes the economics unfavorably.
If they don’t like apple’s terms, they don’t have to play ball with apple. The iPad DOES have a web browser, after all. There is a way to see content not blessed by Pope Steve Jobs.
Exactly. Web-based content (probably flash-based) will work fine on the iPad and any other decent browser hardware. Any mag producer should be thinking along these lines, to avoid being locked into one particular type of hardware, since you can’t expect everyone to buy that one device.
People seem to forget that that’s what the web’s designed for.